Public service to get new arbiter

A NEW central mechanism to expedite the resolution of disciplinary cases in the public service is expected to be in place by next month, says the governance cluster of ministers.

CAPE TOWN — A new central mechanism to expedite the resolution of disciplinary cases in the public service is expected to be in place by next month, the governance cluster of ministers said yesterday.

Many public servants spend months — sometimes years — suspended on full pay while doing nothing but sitting at home costing the taxpayer untold amounts of money, with no productivity.

Head of the governance cluster, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba, told a media briefing that as part of promoting ethics and integrity in the public service, a public administration ethics, integrity and disciplinary technical assistance unit would be established.

The unit would provide, among other things, technical assistance and support to institutions in all spheres of government in terms of the management of ethics, integrity and disciplinary matters relating to misconduct in the public service. Mr Gigaba said in order to expedite the resolution of disciplinary cases the Department of Public Service and Administration had established a central system to deal with the backlog of cases of precautionary suspensions in the public service.

“To this effect, Cabinet approved the creation of a pool of labour-relations specialists and legal experts to deal with the backlog. Preliminary work has been undertaken to identify all departments that require urgent intervention and to appoint the pool of experts.” This pool was expected to commence its work by the end of next month.

Responding to questions, Public Service and Administration Minister Collins Chabane said that to date there had been no central system to deal with disciplinary cases, but that this would now happen within the Department of Public Service and Administration.

The fact that each government department had handled its own disciplinary cases made establishing the total number of cases outstanding difficult to estimate. Government departments would now be encouraged to use the central system and the pool of experts to more speedily resolve disciplinary cases, Mr Chabane said.

The drive towards coordinated government had been at the heart of the government’s transformation and reform programmes for a number of years, Mr Gigaba said. This was supported by the Public Management Administration Act of 2014, which was introduced to strengthen co-ordination of public administration across the three spheres of government.

The act prohibits public servants or their immediate family from doing any business with the government.